him as he leant half forward, half sideways, with his eyes closed and his hands dropping on the arms of the chair … free to take good deep breaths … regular breaths, rather louder ones he thought—then, as men on active service go to sleep in the saddle, and sailors sleep standing at the helm from fatigue, so, bound and cramped, the Professor of Psychology and Specialist in Subliminal Consciousness in the Guelph University of Ormeston, England, slept.
When Professor Higginson awoke the birds had ceased their song and had gone off stealing food. The air was warm. A bright sun was shining upon the wall of the dirty courtyard. He pulled out his watch. It was a quarter to nine. He felt at once reposed and more acutely uncomfortable, fresher and yet more in pain from the bonds round his legs and middle, and less friendly with the hard chair that had been his shell and was now his unwanted seat. As he looked at the watch, he remembered having broken the glass of it sometime ago. He remembered a splinter of that glass running into his hand, and—marvellous creative influence of necessity even in the academic soul!—he remembered that glass could cut.
